


Home Is Where the Heart Is

by TheShadowPanther



Category: Spirited Away
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShadowPanther/pseuds/TheShadowPanther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chihiro finds herself reverted to her childhood years with no idea why everything looks different or why she's here and not <em>there.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Is Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> Very _old_ oneshot. Forgive any amateurish mistakes, please.

"A new life, a new school, and a new town? That's got to be scary," Chihiro's father says as he drives away from the two-faced statue sitting in front of the tunnel.

"I can handle it," Chihiro replies.

With that, Chihiro's new life officially begins.

:-:-:-:

Chihiro goes to her new school and lives in her new town. Time starts to speed by, rather like a snake dragon river spirit in flight, and Chihiro grows up. When she is 22, Chihiro moves out of her family's house to one nearby, just so she can check up on her parents every so often. She doesn't really know why she is doing this; she just has a faint feeling of unease if she leaves them too long.

The day Chihiro turns thirty, she goes for a walk. She enjoys the sights like never before as she walks the familiar path to her parents' house she and her friends have trod for many a year. She climbs up the ramp and onto the area of land beyond.

But instead of taking the road up to her former home, she turns off into the forest, where there is a trail only rarely traveled, and even then tread very lightly. That trail that Chihro turns off onto is a trail of mystery and of adventure, one that Chihiro has gone over only once, and then with her parents in a blue car.

Chihiro follows the path through the shadows and the patchy sunlight the trees around her offer to this stranger who passes through their domain. The trees seem to welcome her as they only address old friends, for trees do not easily forget anything, much less the people they see and the adventures they witness.

All of a sudden, Chihiro pauses. There is a two-faced statue of an old hag before her. The statue, for some reason, has a vaguely sentimental value to the woman, who is much older than the child who left that very same place twenty years ago. Chihiro gently runs her fingers over the idol's face that is closest to her, then sinks down to the ground. She folds her legs under her, sitting beside the statue, then shifts so that she faces away from the tunnel that lies so invitingly behind the two-faced idol.

She sits there, and thinks as if she has all the time in the world, and then some. She does, in a way, for it is Sunday; the only day that the fan store in the city is closed. Chihiro sits there, unmoving, her whirling thoughts gradually fading away into oblivion as she slips into meditation. Her shoulders rest, her muscles relax one by one, and her breathing slows to a rhythm synonymous with that of her passive heart. The stress of the week, and of the last eight years, goes out of her like water out of a spring, or out of a bathhouse trough.

The stress goes out of her, and she is peaceful. The trees close in around her in soothing silence, elsewise discouraging any intruders who think to disturb the peace of the glen Chihiro is in.

After a while of peaceful meditation, Chihiro unfolds her legs. She stretches her arms and her neck, and her legs unclamp. She stands up with another stretch, and starts on to her parents' house. She is due for a visit, long overdue.

:-:-:-:

More time flies by, and Chihiro turns fifty-three. She is alone in her middle ages; all of her friends have moved away, or elsewise grown apart. She has no family; her child friends are all at summer camp or something of the sort, and are not around to lighten up her life. Her parents are long gone, but her visits with them still continue. Chihiro brings flowers every time.

She lives in her parents' blue-roofed house now, again, but this time it is her house alone. In her lifetime, Chihiro has had relationships with a few men, but she has never truly loved the boys she dated. So, five years after she started, she stopped dating, giving the art up altogether.

Despite all this, Chihiro does not live her life entirely in solitude. Besides her child friends and Mamba, her Siamese cat, there is occasionally the teenager that drifts by to see how the famous Chihiro is doing. Chihiro now works as the owner of the only prosperous children's bookstore in the town, and enjoys the job. From time to time, even her old school friends come by and visit, and there is always much to catch up on with those friends.

But right now, at this moment, Chihiro is alone, except for Mamba twining around her ankles. Surprisingly, Chihiro's cat does like to accompany his human pet around on drives, and often demands a drive if there isn't anything going on. Mamba hopes today that by sucking up to his preferred human, she will take him for a drive. Not surprisingly, she gives in and does. Mamba jumps up onto her shoulder and purrs hisapproval mightily.

Chihiro smiles and gets out her car keys. There is no need for a carrier, for Mamba, like any normal cat, hates carriers, and will scratch anyone who gets near with a carrier.

Chihiro heads out the door and locks it behind her, although the actionis pointless. This far off the road, there aren't likely to be any robbers, but Chihiro is not one to take chances with her beautiful house of memories. Chihiro goes into the garage to back her red sedan out, only to remember that she has left her cat's leash inside her house. She locks Mamba in the car, not that he will leave anyway, and goes back into the house.

On the way back out, Chihiro stops by the refrigerator in the kitchen. There is a note on it, of which Chihiro had scribbled to herself. The note said, "Don't 4get—meeting book ppl 2morrow!" Chihiro hits herself on the head. That meeting with the book people is today, and she has forgotten all about it. Glancing at her watch, Chihiro thinks that if she hurries, she can still make it on time. She grabs the things she needs, nabs another thing for Mamba, and rushes out.

She jumps into the car, much to Mamba's apparent satisfaction, for he immediately stops exercising his claws on the upholstery. He pounces into the front seat besides Chihiro, trampling all over her book papers, and sits royally on top of them all. Chihiro teasingly scolds her innocent cat of his follies and starts the engine. Steering her way out of the driveway, she pauses to let a car go by. Then she lets herself out of the driveway and backs into the street. Twirling the steering wheel, with Mamba staring in wide green-eyed fascination, Chihiro turns in the street and goes down the ramp and into the highway it intersects into. She joins the ever-unwavering line of cars racing to work to beat the rush hour, racing to her work herself to beat the deadline for the meeting.

Chihiro turns off the designated exit, and Mamba presses up against the window like a dog. Chihiro comments on this, her exact words being, "Mamba, stop being such a window dog and sit down properly."

Mamba ignores her, maintaining the famous aloofness cats are famous for. Instead he stares this and that, seemingly watching the birds, but also keeping an eye on the people around them too. They stop at a red light, and wait for it to change to smiling green. Suddenly Mamba hisses and jumps all over Chihiro, digging his claws into her head. Chihiro yells and ducks, exactly what Mamba wants to happen. A bullet punches through Chihiro's windshield; it is a stray bullet from an amateur shooter, and it lodges in the headrest where Chihiro's head usually rests. Chihiro, her black eyes wide, stares at Mamba, who is now washing his fur as if nothing has happened. Shaking her head, she politely thanks the drivers who have come over to see if she is okay.

One comments, "Shoot, but if your cat hadn't been along, you would have been dead as a doorknob."

Chihiro grins and replies, "Sure, but then again, Mamba has been trying to get an excuse to get at my head for quite a while now." Shooting a thankful glare at Mamba climbing down into her lap, Chihiro pretends to be regarding him suspiciously for any movement relevant to her head. The drivers laugh and move back to their cars, glad the moment is over.

Chihiro scratches her cat's back in his favorite place and thanks the purring feline, "Thanks Mamba. If it hadn't been for you, we'd have one dead driver and one ownerless cat on our hands, and then where would we be?"

Mamba's green-eyed glower in her direction clearly says his answer, _In trouble, that's where._ Chihiro sighs, blowing her bangs out of her face, and moves on. The light finally turns green, and she guns out of there, glad to be out of the circle. It was scary, poking her head out of Mamba's clawlock on her head to find a bullet in her headrest. A bullet that quite clearly would have busted her brains, and perhaps Mamba's too. As Fortune and the Fates would have it, her head, with Mamba on top of it, was low enough as she ducked that Mamba's fur was only grazed. She turns onto the final stretch of mile before the bookstore and speeds up, her salvation in sight. In fact, her bookstore fills up all of her vision, so that she never knows what hits her in the driver's seat, on the right side.

:-:-:-:

Chihiro opens her eyes and blinks. She is lying outside of a red car in front of a bookstore. She sits up and looks around fuzzily. She is ten years old again, and in the middle of tumultous wreckage. Wait, that red sedan is familiar. It is smashed up by another car, but it's still familiar. Chihiro looks inside the car, and her eyes widen. She is looking at a fifty-three-year-old version of herself in the driver's seat, with a cat mewing piteously over her. The Siamese cat is familiar too, but from where, Chihiro cannot remember. The cat looks directly at her and stops mewing, but only for a moment. It is like the cat knows what is happening, and wisely does not interfere.

People rush up to the crumpled woman in the seat, but Chihiro knows it is already too late for the woman. Strangely, she does not feel anything but distant sympathy. It is like she does not care that much, like she is a stranger. It is weird, but already the picture of the dead woman is fading from her memory, like it never happened.

Chihiro suddenly remembers a particular place up the hill, near where she lived. She turns quickly and runs up the hill, not tiring even as she goes up the steep slope. The cat in the red sedan stops mewing and looks after the young spirit with jade green eyes, memorizing her back and the way she moves. Then he turns away and lays over the fifty-three-year-old body of his human pet, protecting it against any dangers what come.

:-:-:-:

Chihiro runs up the hill and follows the freeway. Something strong is calling her, and she cannot resist. She does not even want to resist, for anything must be better than this situation she has found herself in. She races up a freeway ramp and up to the land above. She turns off the road onto one definitely less traveled. She feels more strongly pulled in this area, as if she has been here before. At her appearance, the trees rustle, the little people in their shrine houses poke their heads out, deer pause, and birds stop singing. For a breathless split-second, nothing moves. Then Life move on as the forest recognizes the movementsof a young shade and therefore are harmless.

All this while, Chihiro is following the strange beckons of her heart. She glides slowly across the trail, looking this way and that. This region is actually more familiar than any Chihiro has passed, and she enjoys the sights. Soon she comes across a two-faced statue. Chihiro gasps as she recognizes the idol of Yubaba and Zeneba merged into one. Yubaba is the one that greeted the spirits in, and Zeneba is the one that let the humans out. Yubaba and Zeneba are twins, and they are both witches. Yubaba owns the bathhouse for spirits in the spirit world, where Chihiro used to work as Sen, when she and her parents strayed in there on their way to their new house more than forty years ago.

All this crosses Chihiro's mind, except for the more-than-forty-years-ago part. But Chihiro does know subconsciously that she is dead, and now will not have to return to the human world. Taking another look at Yubaba's smiling face, Chihiro/Sen moves on. She speeds into the tunnel, through the tunnel, and out again. She crosses the field of broken head statues, remembering the heads that are Yubaba's servants/companions. Behind her, the rolling hills become a river, separating the human world from the spirit one. At the final flight steps is a figure, waiting.

The figure is short of stature, with a strong face and his hair styled as in the Middle Ages. His eyes are a muddy crystal brown. He wears a long gray tunic, leggings, and sandals. A sash circles the waist, completing the outfit. He appears to be waiting for someone, or something, of whom/which is most dear to him.

A huge grin splits Chihiro's face as she spots him, and she waves as she runs toward him, calling, "Haku!" His eyes crystallize into focus, and soften again as he sees Chihiro. He watches her come to him, a generous smile creasing his face.

"Chihiro!"

She runs into his outspread arms, two friends and pure lovers reunited at last, after forty long years.

**FIN**


End file.
